


Break Me In

by yourcrookedheart



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Developing Relationship, Identity Issues, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24185038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourcrookedheart/pseuds/yourcrookedheart
Summary: Charlton has never been very good at being a person. Not even when he was still alive.Or: Charlton's musings on identity and his relationship with Eliot.
Relationships: Charlton/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 10
Kudos: 29





	Break Me In

**Author's Note:**

> ExistentialMalaises asked for Charlton/Eliot angst with a hopeful ending. I hope this fits the bill. 
> 
> Title based on Career Day by Keaton Henson, which came out just in time.

Charlton has never been very good at being a person. Not even when he was still alive.

As the youngest of four brothers and three sisters, he was used to fading into the background. He knew his father and mother loved him, more even than they loved themselves. There was never a lack of affection in their household in those days, same as there was always plenty of warmth and food.

No, the problem was Charlton. He simply didn’t possess his sister Cicely’s sparkling wit, or the crooked smile of his brother Ernald, the one that made all the girls in the village swoon and their suitors sick with envy. While Hugh set off to become a knight when Charlton was only a child, and Gundred’s angelic voice caught the attention of Lady Stern, Charlton’s only hope was an apprenticeship with Sir Aimar, a close friend of his father’s who wrote plays that were performed as far as London.

Two months after he left home, he realized he would be little more than an assistant, writing down words others had imagined.

Charlton wasn’t destined for greatness. He was a copyist; a pen for other people’s minds. His master conceived grand voyages, bloody duels, tragic romances—things that Charlton could only dream of—and Charlton dutifully wrote them down. And in the dark of his bedroom he whispered the words to himself, committing them to memory. The brightest witticisms and the sweetest declarations of love, so that when the moment came, he would be able to use them.

He never got the chance. He died when he was twenty-two, and his only thought the day a young, flaxen-haired girl with fire in her eyes cornered him at the marketplace, was that he hoped his favorite sister Philippa would remember him. That she would lay flowers at his grave, and recall how much he had loved peonies.

*

The first time Charlton visits the city on his own, after Hyman has lent him his body, he buys peonies. They’re a deep shade of pink, almost magenta, and they clash with the orange bedspread, but they smell like home.

“Those clash with the orange bedspread,” Eliot says that afternoon, after he returns from his class.

“I know,” Charlton says, and leaves them where they are.

*

Eliot’s Happy Place was infinitely more interesting than Ora’s or Charlton’s own. For one, it allowed Charlton to discover the wonders of TV, which was almost like theater except everything looked real and some of the actors were female. Charlton gathered most of his knowledge of the 21st century through Eliot’s binge-watching. He discovered _Lost_ first, in one of Eliot’s early Brakebills memories, and he liked that one, even if the ending didn’t make any sense. At some point, he collected most seasons of _Grey’s Anatomy_ scattered through different memories, which tided him over for a couple of weeks. And on the battered screen of an old computer, Charlton watched _Queer As Folk_ , and marveled at the future.

He committed all of this information to memory, adding it to Sir Aimar’s plays. At that point, he had no reason to believe he would ever escape. But he liked those glimpses of the world outside of Eliot’s mind, and he had nothing else to do.

And then there were Eliot’s memories themselves. Charlton felt guilty for prying, even though there was nowhere he could go that wasn’t part of Eliot’s life in some way. Still, when he finally did meet Eliot—the real Eliot, Eliot who was as much a prisoner of the Monster as he was—he couldn’t help but think: _I know you_.

And when the Cottage started to shudder and the nightmare creatures started to shriek, and Eliot was whisked away in the blink of an eye, Charlton added: _But you don’t know me._

*

A week or two after Charlton figures out how to make the bracelet work, they go to a club—Charlton, Eliot, Julia, Penny and Kady. Charlton loves most of what this century has to offer in terms of entertainment, but the music is truly awful, and he feels distinctly out of place, watching other people dancing, laughing, losing themselves into the thrumming beat. Eliot hands him a glass of something, and that makes the whole thing slightly more bearable. Alcohol softens the harsh lights, dims the music.

At some point Eliot gets swallowed by the crowd and Charlton watches, and watches, and wonders whether having a body ever made a difference at all.

*

Being held prisoner in Eliot’s mind was a minor improvement over being stuck in his Happy Place. This way, Charlton got to tag along rather than being confined to memories, and when Eliot did something particularly stupid, like catching feelings for the guy who was raising evil creatures, Charlton could yell at him for it.

Eliot never listened, but that’s just Eliot.

It was only that Charlton had seen this before. Eliot would resent the notion, but the truth was that he was predictable. Charlton could’ve told him in which memory he’d find his door, if he’d only stumbled across that particular memory during his wanderings. Watching someone self-destruct was decidedly less entertaining when it wasn’t Meredith Grey but someone Charlton cared about, who deserved better. And so he yelled, and hoped that perhaps one day it would stick.

When he wasn’t shadowing Eliot, he found a quiet corner of his mind to retire to. A beach Eliot had visited with Margo, white and endless, the Brakebills lawn in summer, or an evergreen part of the Fillorian woods that reminded Charlton of home. Occasionally, he went looking for a TV series he hadn’t yet memorized.

But on days when the loneliness got to Charlton, when secluded memories wouldn’t do and Eliot seemed to need space, he revisited Eliot’s past. Charlton liked to linger in the happy memories. Margo, sometimes Fen. More often, Idri. Frequently, Quentin. Rarely Mike. Charlton wasn’t sure what he was hoping to find—though he caught glimpses. The eager yet bemused smile on Eliot’s face when Mike would compliment him. The confidence in his tone as he told Idri about his plans for Fillory. The way his eyes would linger on Quentin, just a little too long, just long enough for Charlton to notice.

He remembered those memories from Eliot’s Happy Place, and yet he could never seem to come up with a justification to himself as to why he chose to revisit them now.

Then Hyman offered his body, and all in all that seemed like the best option for everyone involved.

*

It’s much harder to talk to Eliot now that Charlton is no longer in his head. He knew this, of course. And yet he’d thought… What, that he was different? That knowing Eliot would change anything? On the outside, in his own body separate from Eliot’s, Eliot is a closed book, exactly the way he likes it. Perhaps if Margo were here—but she isn’t.

So Charlton tries to find his way back inside. He asks Julia to download _Sleepless in Seattle_ for him, because Eliot showed it to Mike once.

“I’ve seen that one,” Eliot says when Charlton suggests watching it.

“But you like it, don’t you?” Charlton asks.

“Sure,” Eliot agrees, a little confused.

They watch the movie, and then they fuck on the couch, and yet Charlton can’t help but feel he got it wrong.

*

Charlton had been an apprentice for three years already when one of Sir Aimar’s actors fell ill. It was the evening before the premiere, and Sir Aimar had nearly dragged him onto the stage himself. But the actor’s face was pale and covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and it was clear he wouldn’t be appearing on stage the next day, if ever again.

Sir Aimar was beside himself. It was a small part, but no one could learn the lines in one night, and no one knew them. And then his eye fell on Charlton.

No one had been more surprised to discover that Charlton was a decent actor than Charlton himself. He supposed it made sense—he’d spent countless evenings reciting the lines to himself, studying the actual actors and their inflections from a dark corner behind the curtain. He was a copyist, and what was an actor but a copyist with a body instead of a quill?

He was never good at being a person, but he could pretend to be one. He could be a good actor.

Which is alright, because Eliot is a good actor too.

*

They stumble their way into an argument eventually. Deep down Charlton knows it’s better than this stalemate silence they’ve found themselves in, but that's hard to remember when Eliot is aiming to hurt. Eliot is good at this, too. Charlton knows, and yet that never seems to mean much when it comes down to it.

It had started when Charlton brought up Seb—an implicitly banned subject, just like Margo, just like Quentin, just like any memory of Eliot’s life before, unless Eliot brings it up himself.

Actually, what Charlton had said was: “I’m sorry I can’t be emotionally unavailable like you,” and “Fuck you.”

Things had only gone downhill from there.

Until Eliot, exasperated and clearly five minutes from walking out of the door, yells, “I just want you to be you!”

And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

“I don’t know who that is,” Charlton says. It doesn’t come out the way he wants it to, but the argument has drained his energy. He can only sink down onto the couch and stare at his hands—at the bracelet looped around his wrist that had, at first, honestly seemed like a gift. “This,” Charlton says, meaning _Brakebills_ , meaning _Julia and Penny_ , meaning _this century_ , “This isn’t my life. I don’t fit here.” 

It’s not what he really means. He doesn’t fit here, that much is true, but then he's never fit anywhere. He no longer wonders why Hyman was so quick to exchange his body for a role as a ghost. Spectating is easy—it’s participating that’s hard.

Whatever Charlton’s said makes Eliot pause. Something shifts in his gaze. “You could’ve said something,” he accuses, followed by a sigh as he waves the thought away. “No, I figured,” he says instead. “I knew—I know.” That makes Charlton laugh, because Eliot doesn’t know him. How could he, when Charlton doesn’t even know himself?

Eliot looks at him then, really looks at him. “Do you think you could?”

Charlton thinks about it. About the man he wanted to become, back when his life still stretched ahead of him, before the opportunity to become more than what he’d been was taken away from him. About Eliot, who has had his fair share of losses and is still standing despite it all.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Can you help me be a person?”

Eliot’s lips stretch into a tentative smile. “Please. Have you met me?”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr](https://queennsansa.tumblr.com).


End file.
